Steve Wodka
Appearances
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Okay, so here, this is my FBI investigation documents. Everything's in cryological order.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
She says, this plant is essentially being operated by a bunch of kids, 18 and 19-year-old kids, kids that were hired off of the local farms. who didn't know anything about radioactive materials and what's going to happen to them as they grow up and this material is inside of them.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
She was strong. I mean, she knew she was on the right side of things and what was going on in the plant was wrong. And I think I gave her her strength.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
The belief is that that intense radiation that goes on essentially for the rest of the person's life causes lung cancer. So the handling of plutonium is supposed to be very strict. There's supposed to be essentially no contact whatsoever with this material. There's always supposed to be a barrier between the worker and plutonium.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
And what was going on in this plant was that barrier was being breached on a daily basis.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
And Karen said, I'll do it. I'll pull it together. And we say to her, well, okay, report back to me, but keep your profile low or non-existent. No one should know that you're doing this.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
So we were there at the Holiday Inn, and we were waiting. And waiting. It's ours.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
And I said, something's wrong. So I ended up making phone calls.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
He says to me, Steve, I just learned that she was killed in this auto accident. And Drew is like sitting as close to me as you are. And I had to turn to him and say, my God, you know, she's dead. First, there was grief, primarily for Drew. He was devastated. and uh... He cried. He cried to me.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
We all climbed in Burnham's car, and we drove up the highway, and I don't know how it is that we found it, but we actually found the site.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Nobody was there at that time. We're walking around in the dark. It was cold and windy, and I found her paycheck in the mud.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
There's no question that the night of November 13th, 1974, she should have stayed right there in Crescent. And Burnham and I should have gone up there, found someplace up there, and just talked to her there. And not have put her at the vulnerability of driving down the highway. There's no question about that.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
They didn't seek to negotiate with its unions. They sought to impose a contract on the workers. And if the workers didn't like the contract, they could go out and strike. And in fact, from late 72 to early 73, there was a nine-week strike.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
And if you run a safe plant, if you really take the precautions, it cuts into profit.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
The OCAW was, in the early 70s, was a very male-dominated union. The industries that we represent, oil refining, chemical plants, huge nuclear facilities, these were all male-dominated plants. And it was highly unusual that women worked anywhere and that a woman had risen to to a position of leadership in the local union.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
Because the company's handling of plutonium were governed by the Atomic Energy Commission. This agency had regulations. It had the power to take...
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
So part of the whole issue was not only was the company doing bad things, but that the Atomic Energy Commission itself hadn't been enforcing the law, hadn't been protecting the workers. And this was the problem. with the Atomic Energy Commission in that they had not come down on this company, even though it was clear that this company was routinely violating the conditions of its license.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
You have to understand, there were all these contamination incidents at the plant leading up through to 1974. Kerbegee was never fined a dollar.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
So I'm working with them and we're going over everything. And then this whole issue of quality control starts coming up. And it's something we had never heard of before and something we had never dealt with before.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
They said, Material and rods that should have failed were being passed. And we think you should know about that.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
The more we thought about this, it was, you know, there could be a meltdown.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
We said, okay, look, we've never heard of something like this before. And if you're going to level a charge like this against Kern-McGee, it's got to be documented. People have got to see it. how and where the quality control tests and checks were falsified.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
We were concerned that she was going to get fired. That was the worst thing that we thought could possibly happen. That was about the limit. That was where we were wrong.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
We wanted to see what we could do to bring maximum pressure on them in order so that the local can get a decent contract.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
And I said, you know, Karen, I can't take notes on this. I've got to tape you. Can I turn it on?
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
Okay, now, talking to Karen Silkwood, and today is... Monday, October 7th. I've been discussing what's been going on in the last week since the people from Kerr and McGee are up here.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
All right, now what about this getting to these kids joking about getting hot?
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
Okay, then what happened with this gal who you had talked to about plutonium and cancer, and she got all concerned. How did that come about again? Okay.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
No, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on. What I'm trying to tell you, what I found out when I was in Minnesota about plutonium getting into your lung and these particles getting into your lung. Well, when these two doctors, when you guys meet up with these two doctors, these doctors are going to flip out when they hear the stories you have to tell.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
But the whole point is, is that Plutonium is so carcinogenic, is so potent, that it's now figured that, you know, under the conditions that you work under in that kind of a plant, you don't have to work there for five years. You might only have to work there for one friggin' month, and you've got enough of a body burden to cause cancer.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
Well, yes, I'm going to tell you that, because I told you. If the union loses this election, I tell you, Karen, you better get the out of there. I'll be gone.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
That place is going to turn into a hellhole. I'm going to shut them down before I go. Well, yeah, we've got ideas on that, too. And we know what their Achilles heel is. But, I mean, you know, turn the tape off for this.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
If she truly had fallen asleep at the wheel, she'd be alive. She would have lived. So only by being awake... and trying to hold this car on course, which you have the trajectory that she did.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
To me, it was more like an amateur job. Somebody else who, much, much lower, someone who didn't have access to the corporate power, someone whose job would have been directly on the line, realized what was going on with the documents. I think that they probably had the most to lose.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
They open up the garage. And these three people show up. Well, only two of them were with the AEC.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
In order to survey things for plutonium, like a spiral notebook with 50 pages in it, you just can't just wand around. the top of it and say it's clean. You've got to go page by page by page to see if there's any contamination in it.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
Fagan tells me right off the bat that she fell asleep and went off the side of the road. I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, you don't understand. She was just on the highway for a few minutes.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
And I'll never forget Fagan saying, look, In my mind, she fell asleep at the wheel of the car unless you can prove it differently. And that started in my mind the fact that, now wait a minute, the fix is in. Something is going on here. How could this guy just shut the door in my face? He's supposed to be an investigating officer.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
And we ripped the box open and went through everything and there was nothing in there about quality control.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
Now, this car had hit this concrete wing wall going 40 to 45 miles an hour. Silkwood was impaled on the steering wheel. But yet, he says there's these two piles of paper sitting on the back seat. It defies the law of gravity.
20/20
'Radioactive' - Ep. 4: The Investigators
This is a muddy craft site. There is this reddish Oklahoma mud on the left-hand driver's side of the car. You got these three guys sitting there, papers scattered all over the place. Not one piece of the papers that were given to us had any mud on them. No mud whatsoever on the stuff that was given to us.